The After-Men (Synopsis)

Clark Ashton Smith

A planet in a far system has been colonized from Earth. After many aeons, the last of the colonists, who have preserved the original human type, are driven to take flight in a space-ship by a terrible plague that has wiped out all their fellows. They seek the mother planet, Earth, of which traditions have been preserved — and find that the root-stock of humanity has evolved into something as little like men as men are like prehistoric reptiles. Regarded with horror, treated as monsters, they flee again to seek some new world.